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On January 20, President Barack Obama delivered his constitutionally required State of the Union address to Congress. In it, he said that America was on the road to economic recovery, having escaped the perils of the 2008 financial crisis, and he announced that Americans had turned the page in the war against terrorism. The President also announced his drive to provide two years of free community college to millions of Americans, increase taxes on the wealthy, and give mandated paid sick leave to working Americans. The Republican rebuttal was delivered by newly elected Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, who said that the President needs to take the threat from the Islamic State more seriously, that more needed to be done to thwart cyberterrorism, and that Americans should have more freedom to achieve the American dream. Political pundits saw the State of the Union as an attempt by President Obama to lay out the political platform for his successor in 2016, while others saw it as an attempt by the President to rejuvenate his administration and avoid lame duck status. While there is little chance of many of President Obama’s domestic initiatives becoming law in 2015, extempers should still be aware of what the President said in the State of the Union because it is usually a good benchmark to assess the success of a presidency in any given year.
This topic brief will explore President Obama’s proposals in the State of the Union Address, the Republican reaction to it, and how the President may try to enact some of his policies in 2015.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
Two weeks ago, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ended Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Beginning shortly after the September 11 terror attacks, Operation Enduring Freedom produced the fall of the Taliban government, scattered remnants of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, and attempted to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people. Operation Freedom’s Sentinel will replace Operation Enduring Freedom, with the United States leading a contingent of 13,000 foreign troops who will continue to provide training and intelligence services to Afghan security forces and support for counterterrorism operations. President Barack Obama has called for a drawdown of all American forces from Afghanistan by 2016, with only 1,000 remaining in a non-combat capacity. However, 2014 was the deadliest year on record in Afghanistan as more than 5,000 Afghan troops and 10,000 civilians were killed. Since the American withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 produced the rise of the Islamic State, opponents of the President’s drawdown plan argue that the same fate could befall Afghanistan, thereby erasing the gains that NATO troops made since 2001. New Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has also expressed hesitation about the withdrawal of more American and foreign troops from Afghan territory, warning last week that a future withdrawal should be based on mutual interests and not rigid timetables.
As 2014 draws to a close, one of the biggest news stories is the growing American economy. While the U.S. economy officially exited from the Great Recession in June 2009, Americans have remained pessimistic. They worry about whether the economy will continue to be robust for future generations, how there are still a large number of part-time workers that wish they could work full-time, and the impact of globalization and immigration on job growth. Last week, the Commerce Department revised its third quarter numbers for America’s gross domestic product (GDP). It found that the economy grew by 5% between July and September, which is the largest quarter of economic growth that the country has experienced since 2003. A rise in exports, falling oil prices, and enhanced consumer spending accounted for the figure and economists are optimistic that America’s economy is heading toward a period of sustainable growth. Since extempers will face questions about the U.S. economy several times at various tournaments in the second semester, Extemp Central thought it was proper to provide a topic brief breaking down America’s economic performance in 2014 and assess its prospects for 2015.
Since 1960, the United States has maintained an economic embargo on Cuba, an island nation just ninety miles off the coast of Florida. The embargo was an instrument of Cold War policymaking, as Cuba became a communist nation under Fidel Castro and seized American economic assets without compensation. Even after the Cold War ended, the United States maintained the embargo as a political instrument in hopes of weakening the Castro regime. However, in the 1990s and 2000s, the embargo came to be seen by other Latin American nations as an unjust extension of American imperialism and some pundits allege that the embargo came to isolate the United States from the rest of the Western Hemisphere just as much as the embargo isolated Cuba from the American mainland. Last week, President Obama announced that he was taking executive action to weaken the long standing Cuban embargo and that he would move to normalize relations with Cuba. The President’s action received bipartisan support from those who believe that the embargo harms America’s relations with other Latin American nations, yet also received bipartisan criticism for rewarding a dictatorial regime that abuses the rights of its citizens. The President’s actions have forced 2016 presidential contenders such as Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio to weigh in on the issue and depending on how well the President’s normalization push goes, it could become a significant issue in the Republican presidential primaries and the 2016 general election.
Since June, the price of oil has plunged 40% on the international market in response to economic slowdowns in Europe and Asia and a glut of supply from the Middle East and North America. The falling price of oil, near $60 a barrel at the time of the writing of this brief, has been a boon for nations that import fossil fuels. It also provides much needed stimulus for consumer-driven economies such as the United States as people are able to take the money they would normally spend on high gas prices and direct it to other economic activities. However, the falling oil price has worked against some economies that rely largely on the proceeds from oil exports. Countries such as Venezuela, Russia, and Nigeria, among others, are now left wondering how they will react to the sudden fall of global oil prices and the decisions that they make could determine whether their current governments survive.
Last Thursday President Obama announced that he was taking executive action to resolve part of the nation’s pressing illegal immigration problem. The President’s executive order will allow up to five million illegal immigrants to obtain work permits, thereby allowing them to legally stay and work in the United States for the next three years. This is nearly half of the country’s illegal immigrant population, which is estimated to be more than eleven million people. The President’s defenders argued that executive action had to be taken because Congress has failed to solve the illegal immigration problem over the last several decades, but opponents argued that the order was an abuse of executive power and that it would harm bipartisan cooperation for the next two years on Capitol Hill.